The Free Ticket

The Free Ticket

Imagine it’s your birthday and someone gives you free tickets to an amazing amusement park. You are thrilled and extremely thankful. These tickets are a gift. You did nothing to earn them, yet they are yours to enjoy.

You decide to go that day. As you approach the gate, you discover there are rules. Certain items cannot be brought inside. To enter, you must leave them behind. Only by following the gate’s rules can you step into the park. Once inside, there are more rules to follow. If you break them, you may be removed from the park.

The choice is yours, you can stay outside and decide to not accept the rules and throw the tickets in the garbage, or you can go through the gate and enjoy all the park has to offer, following the rules that keep you inside.

Salvation works the same way...

Jesus has given us the free gift of entering into His Kingdom. We did not earn the gift. Actually we did not deserve the gift at all. But he gave it to us anyway out of the grace of His heart.

But to actually enter, we must believe the gift is real. We must accept the gift. We must than come to the gate. That gate is baptism.

Just as the amusement park requires certain things to be left behind, we must leave sin behind through repentance. Baptism is the step where we leave our old life behind and enter the Kingdom.

Once we come up out of the water, we are inside the Kingdom.

But the rules do not end there. To remain in God’s Kingdom, we must live according to His authority and follow His commands. Faithful living is required, not to earn salvation, but these are the requirements once in the Kingdom.

Grace is not removed by these steps. Salvation is still free, but entering and staying in the Kingdom requires our obedience, just as enjoying the amusement park requires fo

llowing its rules.